To ask school to stop sending me these texts?

[SquiglePig]

I have 3 kids in same high-school.

They've started to send texts to parents everytime a child is late to a lesson, basically saying 'your child is late for lesson, please don't allow this to happen again etc'

My kids are never late to school in the mornings, ever.

It's my responsibility to get them into school on time, which I do.

I've had the discussion with them about getting to lessons on time but what can I actually do?

I feel like once they're on school grounds I don't really have physical control over how long it takes them to get to lessons even though I keep telling them.

Also it's not a text to my phone it's a text via the school messaging system which means I have to log in to see it.

I'm at work and I don't know if it's something important or not and have to check and I can get in trouble for being on my phone too much.

Please don't think this is me saying I have no responsibility over my children's behaviour in school, of course I do but I feel that I do not need to recieve a text every time one of them is late to arrive to a lesson when I've got them into school on time.

In my day there were teachers in the hall to usher kids to their lessons?

Act like what? I am a teacher, my job is to teach, not to spend 10 hours a day doing admin tasks because people like OP and you expect me to parent your children.

What did teachers do when register was taken on paper and email/school apps didn't exist?

Why does a parent who works worrying about getting in trouble at work because of school's obsessive messaging make her "lazy and entitled"? Maybe she's just worried about her job?

Why can't your precious automatic system instead track who has how many late marks, so that the consistent skivers can get spoken to by a teacher/letter sent home/detention rather than harassing the parent in real time?

Saying it would be a waste of time talking to lazy entitled parents. Most professions have annoying stakeholders. But treating them like adult humans tends to get a better response than speaking about them with utter contempt. What happened to home school partnership?

Also since when did "parenting" just mean doling out punishments left right and centre? For my DD it just isn't very effective and I thought the general consensus was that was true for most people. Is there anything else the OP can realistically do better than the school? I suggested a conversation to find out what's really going on but without knowing the layout of the school, habits of the teachers etc I'd have to take dad's word for it and the conversation might be better had directly.

Behaviour management was a part of teaching last time I looked. So you are being paid to do that not parent your students. Parenting is a long ol' stretch and most parents know that picking your battles is a big part of the overall campaign. Some behaviour - like instances of lateness - is better dealt with instantly.

I do agree with others that a pattern of lateness needs investigation but by both school AND parents since the school are the ones logging the absences. For example my kid was getting absence marks from some lessons because she was at a music lesson and the teacher wasn't marking her present properly.

Yeah this is what I mean. It's not parenting you're talking about, it's discipline, which in this instance I think is better dealt with in school, though it could be escalated to parents if there's a concerning pattern- but id expect a conversation to happen in this instance, including with the dc.

This

I'm sure the teacher has a conversation with each student each time they're late. Persistently late students don't give a shit. And their parents don't give a shit either it seems. You aren't doing your kids any favours by being too afraid to back up the teachers who have to deal with the result of your lack of parenting.

It’s very simple, each time you get a text because your kids think they are above the school rules of timing and roll in late, make sure there is a consequence at home. Keep being consistent and they will learn. It’s called being a parent.

Personally I’d be pissed off with my kids, not the school!

Meh. You're judging me very personally. I'm not sure my dc have ever been late for class. I've certainly never received any messages about it, so I'm not being defensive. I'm just saying that "parent your child" has become a bit of a refrain on here recently but I'm not sure quality parenting is necessarily synonymous with doling out knee jerk punishments off the back of automated texts.

Support the school, parent your child and sanction them.

Teachers can't be stood in corridors ushering. They are in classrooms teaching the kids that are on time. Start sanctioning your kids every time you get a text.

There is no teacher to usher secondary school students to lessons! They have to get there under their own steam.

Hour often are your kids being late?

Instead of asking the school to stop texting, why not talk to your kids and tell them to stop being late?!

But each time a kid is late for class, it's disrespectful. It affects the rest of the class. It affects their learning time and disrupts the lesson.

It takes a community to bring up a child. Where has the respect gone for teachers and police? I guess they are too scared to enforce consequences. If the community can't bring up a child then when they are adults and are out of control then the prisons will discipline them ain't that right.

So issue detention if it's so clear? I just don't understand what you expect the parents to do that school can't in this instance, and why asking that question is some kind of abdication of parental responsibility? I'm not seeking to undermine school authority here, I'd tell my kids to suck it up if they got detention for this. I do sympathize with schools having to step into the parenting arena sometimes. It's just this doesn't feel a very good example of that.

Discipline should be done there and then when the child misbehaves or is late. Do you give out detentions or was that back in the old days.

Can you talk to the school and ask them to only text you if it’s urgent, because is is disturbing you at work? Ask them to email you re. Anything non-urgent, like lateness.

If your children are late so many times that it’s disrupting your work then you have a child problem, not a school problem.

Detentions need staffed. I personally think schools should properly staff detentions but many schools don't have the money. So they give out as few as possible. I know schools that have relaxed the behaviour policies because they can't staff the detentions, and the result is behaviour gets worse because the sanctions aren't a deterrent. Another part of the reason teachers are leaving in droves and schools can't recruit.
But if parents actually parented their kids, it would make a huge difference.

I would want to know if my children were regularly late for lessons. It seems like an efficient way of communicating this info.

Teaching is such a hard job, and unsupportive parents make it even more so. I am a bit surprised that 66% of people have voted against the school, and in favour of a parent moaning that she is being told that her children are routinely choosing to disrupt the learning of others by being late.

OP explained its impacting her at work. Why can't the school just send one text or email a day?

Why can't her kids just turn up to lessons on time?

But like PP's have said, we all support the school in imposing its own discipline. The school is kind of undermining itself by kicking this back to mum and dad. I hope they are at least dealing with the pupils before the parents do. Parents also have a hard job and shouldn't be acting as the first line of school behaviour management. I expect to be spoken to about serious or chronic issues, not pulled into every infraction in the middle of the working day. At secondary school the pupils need to face the actual consequences from the teachers, not have mum and dad mediate it as a matter of course.